I believe in good luck, and the harder I work and the more I believe in myself, the luckier I get.

It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it (i.e. the Book of Revelations), and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherence of our own nightly dreams.

When the course of events shall have removed you to distant scenes of action where laurels not nurtured with the blood of my country may be gathered, I shall urge sincere prayers for your obtaining every honor and preferment which may gladden the heart of a soldier.

Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially in politics.

If, in my retirement to the humble station of a private citizen, I am accompanied with the esteem and approbation of my fellow citizens, trophies obtained by the bloodstained steel, or the tattered flags of the tented field, will never be envied. The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.

Unmerited abuse wounds, while unmerited praise has not the power to heal.

A government held together by the bands of reason only, requires much compromise of opinion.